Dr. Laura O'Reilly:

Although I am here with Addiction Counsellors of Ireland, ACI, I am also the manager of a community drug service that has a dedicated child and family centre attached to the service. We work with people who are at the pregnancy stage or have very young babies in the early months. We work with them through those preschool years. While the service we provide is an early years service, it is a wraparound service that considers all of these other socioeconomic issues, such as poverty, family, parents, trauma and a whole range of issues that we know potentially expose that young child to risk. That work is done in a way that recognises the family unit, rather than separating out the mother and father from the child. We try to respond to the risk factors that are contributing to where those parents are at and the potential impact of what might be happening in the family.

While that is not necessarily drug-specific work, there is drug-specific work happening with the parents. We are putting other holistic kinds of early years responses in place for those young people. Often, we get caught up in what drug-specific supports, drug education or drug prevention look like, but if we can work with those families at that early stage and respond to those factors that have contributed to trauma, addiction and mental health issues, then that is the early intervention piece for me.